Batman vs. Superman: Ranking The Films From Worst To Best

7. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

As the grand finale to Christopher Nolan's take on Batman, The Dark Knight Rises had a lot of expectations to meet having to top the success of 2008's The Dark Knight along with having to keep audiences from feeling a shadow cast over the film by the absence of Heath Ledger. Fortunately, despite a few faults, Rises is an enjoyable send-off for Christian Bale's Batman and the world that Christopher Nolan and his team had created over the course of the trilogy. The film does a great job in bringing the events of the series full circle, tying together strands like the return of the League of Shadows, the fallout from Harvey Dent's death and even a cameo from Jonathan Crane to bring a sense of cohesion to the trilogy as a whole. The action is exciting, with the formidable Bane raising the stakes higher than they've ever been, and the performances are solid, even if certain characters, like Alfred and Lucius Fox, generally have far less to do than before. Where the film tends to falter, however, is when it rushes through certain major moments in its push to get to the end. Bane is dispatched with a cheap one-liner by Catwoman, Talia - who is revealed in the last act as the true villainous mastermind - dies in an unintentionally funny moment after a brief chase and even the question of how John Blake can carry on Batman's legacy without the bottomless financial resources, intense physical training and technical know-how that Bruce Wayne had is skipped over. Ultimately, The Dark Knight Rises doesn't quite hit the heights of its predecessors, but it's an entertaining and exciting spectacle that helped ensure that Nolan's trilogy has forever earned its place in comic book film history and set a high bar for the cinematic future of the character.